At first, the banquet audience at the 38th annual Conservative Political Action Conference paid Mitch Daniels, Indiana's Republican governor, the conventional compliment of frequently, almost reflexively, interrupting his address with applause.

Yo, peeps, this is how, a real wordsmith crafts, an opening sentence.

But as they realized they were hearing something unconventional - that they were being paid the rare compliment of being addressed as reflective adults - they reciprocated his respect with quiet attention to his elegant presentation of conservatism for grown-ups.

Get real, Will. This is CPAC. That audience fell into alcohol/HFCS induced comas while waiting for the next Andy Breitbart/birther wingnut to get on stage and bite the head off another chicken.

America, he said, faces "a survival-level threat," a new "Red Menace" consisting of ink. No enterprise, public or private, "can remain self-governing, let alone successful, so deeply in hock to others as we are about to be." Some people accept or "even welcome" a "ballooning of the state" that consigns America to "a gray parity" with other profligate nations. Such people believe history is controlled by a "leftward ratchet," always - never mind "the Reagan Interruption" - moving toward a more powerful state.

1-2-3! 1-2-3! Genuflect to Reagan, complain about our national debt, and with Reagan-style convenient memory, forget that Ronald Wilson Reagan quadrupled that debt.

Americans must say "an affectionate thank-you" to the last century's major social welfare programs - then sunset them, after those Americans "currently or soon to be enrolled" in them have passed from the scene. Social Security and Medicare should be updated to conform to Americans' "increasing longevity and good health." Medicare 2.0 should respect Americans' dignity and competence by empowering them to make "their own decisions" by delivering its dollars directly to individuals and expecting them to "pay for more of their routine care like the discerning, autonomous customers we know them to be."

The standard "Let's pay for our wars for plutocrats, tax cuts for plutocrats, and disastrous deregulation for plutocrats by stealing from Social Security."

To spur economic growth, we must "untie Gulliver": "The regulatory rainforest through which our enterprises must hack their way is blighting the future of millions of Americans." Barack Obama's recent executive order to prune the forest was, Daniels said, akin to the world's leading rap music producer suddenly expressing alarm about obscenity. And Daniels thinks conservatives' "first thought" should be about "those still on that first rung of life's ladder":

"Upward mobility from the bottom is the crux of the American promise, and the stagnation of the middle class is in fact becoming a problem, on any fair reading of the facts. Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some."

Funny, G. W. Bush and our deregulation-created financial bubble seem to have gone down the memory hole. Along with 30 years of GOP class warfare on behalf of the wealthiest 2% of Americans.

Author of the most succinct characterization of the Obama agenda ("shock-and-awe statism"), Daniels has practiced the lean government he preaches. Under him, Indiana has its fewest state employees since 1978, the nation's lowest state-government employment per capita, the lowest effective property taxes and the third-lowest per capita spending. So he has the credentials to counsel conservatives about the need to compromise in the interest of broadening the constituency for difficult reforms....He reminded his listeners that when he was serving Ronald Reagan, the president admonished him and others that "we have no enemies, only opponents." The case for less strident conservative rhetoric is practical: "As we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us, just a bit."

Do not, Jefferson warned, undertake great departures on "slender majorities." Conservatives criticized Democrats for doing just that regarding health care.

Here is our closing crescendo of convenient amnesia. Both Will and Daniels remember that Daniels served in the Reagan Administration. Neither can remember that Daniels was G. W. Bush's OMB director from January 2001 through June 2003. I wonder why?

George Will has lied about global warming in the pages of the Washington Post. I say eliminating any mention of Mitch Daniels' record as OMB Director is equally dishonest.